"Neapolitan pizza has flown as high as it can go."

[Chris Hennes]

I ran across this piece by Adam Lindsley via Serious Eats this morning:

In the years between 2009 and 2012, I have eaten a lot of authentic Neapolitan pizza. And I mean a lot of it. There are certainly degrees of quality from one location to the next, but generally most places attempting to do authentic Neapolitan pizza hit pretty close to the mark. But even the very best places I tried (Keste in New York City comes to mind) couldn’t definitively best my favorite non-Neapolitan pizzas across the country (Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, Ken's or Apizza Scholls here in Portland, or Di Fara in New York, for example).

[...]

I was disappointed because it confirms for me, at least without leaving the country, that Neapolitan pizza has flown as high as it can go. It is not the zenith of pizza.

What do you think? Is Neapolitan the ne plus ultra of pizza, or can it be beat by other styles that can elevate the pizza to still higher levels?

[HowardLi]

I would have to say that it all depends on the person. Food is only as good as the person consuming it believes it is, and we all know tastes vary widely.

[weinoo]

I find it humorous that this writer's "research" on the best Neapolitan pizza doesn't include eating pizza in Naples. And really, is he covering any ground that we haven't argued endlessly about here?

We ate at Motorino just this past Friday night. And you know what? The pizza was great, but it wasn't as good as other pizza I've had - at Motorino!

But that doesn't answer your question - it just proves that I'm indeed a curmudgeon. Be that as it may - I think that any given style, on any given day, can be the best. All depends on whose manning the ovens, whose making the pie, and on and on.

[larryroohr]

I've enjoyed well done neapolitans very much, and for the most part unsuccessfully chased making my own with my home oven and various barbecue grill schemes to get the hot oven needed.

Then one day a thread popped up on pizzamaking.com about the New England pan pizza style I grew up with and that's about all I make now, love them. Just a matter of familiarity I think.

The point I want to make is these pizza's are so fundamentally different I don't consider them to be comparable if your judging pizza to pizza quality, It's more like hot dogs vs hamburgers to me.

Neapolitans are much harder to get right, recipe, technique, the oven, usually sparse toppings that almost look like they were plated on the crust. It's primarily about that crust. My home brew East Hartford style are about the crust baked in a good bit of olive oil in the pan (hard to screw that up) and more so the sauce, cheese and toppings.

So, IMO I don't think it works to compare neapolitan pizza 'quality' with other styles, to me they're different ball games. I like them for different reasons.

Also, Bianco's in Phoenix is very much a neapolitan pizza from what I've read (never been there), pic's and reviews are all over the web.

Well, this clinches what I'm making for dinner tonight....

[jrshaul]

Neapolitan pizza, around here, starts at something like $14. You buy it at a fancy, sit-down restaurant. Tack on another $3 for a tip.

I can get a gratuitously oversized slice of noveau-NY pizza from Ian's for $3.50. It's not bad, either - they're big on fresh, and source locally what ingredients they can. They had a roasted pork loin and peach pizza that was more than passable, and the Mac & Cheese is quite good.

I would much rather have the neapolitan pizza. However, given that the cost of admission at Ian's is equivalent to the gratuity on the alternative, I just don't see the point.

[slkinsey]

It seems ridiculous to apply this to anything other than the writer's individual preferences. To my tastes, Keste is so far ahead of Di Fara that they're not even remotely in competition. Others with different preferences would probably say they were equally separated but that Di Fara is the clear winner. So is there a clear answer? Clearly not!

[davidkeay]

I'm in the "different kinds of pizza are just different foods" camp... Di Faras is one thing, and neopolitan is another. My ideal neopolitan pie really shows off the way that pizza is fresh baked bread in ways that most pizzas don't.

I don't find that keste moves me the way it moves some people though - my first neopolitan pie was at UPN in New York and it was an eye opening experience... everything since then has blurred together a bit. Keste didn't feel like it was anything above paulie gee's, forcella, or via tribunali (to name a few offhand I remember).

[Mjx]

Add me to the 'it depends on too many factors to be an answerable question' crowd (e.g. I don't even consider a thick-crust 'pizza' to be pizza, but something derived from pizza).

[haresfur]

I think the telling part is, "the pizza at UPN is of the highest caliber. By that I mean that it was as good as any Neapolitan pizza I’ve ever eaten--but no better."

It seems to me that Neapolitan pizza has such a narrow specification that it pretty much by definition has "flown as high as it can go." The process is constrained to give a particular result so the latitude to produce something transcendingly different is minuscule. If it was amazingly different it probably wouldn't be Neapolitan. What does he expect?

[nickrey]

I find it humorous that this writer's "research" on the best Neapolitan pizza doesn't include eating pizza in Naples.

This. Authentic seems to have a new meaning.

Surely he is talking about the best US version of this pizza. Seems horribly ethnocentric to someone sitting at the other end of the world.

Edited July 9, 2012 by nickrey (log)

[gfweb]

I think the telling part is, "the pizza at UPN is of the highest caliber. By that I mean that it was as good as any Neapolitan pizza I’ve ever eaten--but no better."

It seems to me that Neapolitan pizza has such a narrow specification that it pretty much by definition has "flown as high as it can go." The process is constrained to give a particular result so the latitude to produce something transcendingly different is minuscule. If it was amazingly different it probably wouldn't be Neapolitan. What does he expect?

Exactly right, I think. This is as much a question of taxonomy as pizza.